August 2017
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Empowered. Live Well, Plan Well, Be Inspired.
BUONGIORNO, MIO AMICO!
Our family recently returned from our first trip across the big pond to Italy and an Adriatic cruise with stops in Croatia, Montenegro, and Greece. We love to travel as a family and try to visit a foreign country at least every other year. Lately, we’ve been visiting Latin America, with visits to Panama, Costa Rica, and Nicaragua.
We never rented a car and instead relied on public transportation to move around the country. (Oh, why can we not have amazing public transportation in the States?) With so many moving parts to our trip, I was amazed that all of the pieces fell so neatly into place. In fact, other than upgrading our airline seats for the long overnight flight overseas, there is not a single thing I would have wanted to change about our trip.
Our daughter graduated from high school this year (wow, I feel old!), and we decided to kick things up a notch for our next vacation. Jill wanted to visit Italy, and so, 18 months ago, we started planning our next adventure to Europe.
I experience a similar sense of immense satisfaction when a family succession plan (i.e. estate plan) I have drafted and implemented for a family comes to fruition and actually works the way that it should to save the family time, money, and headaches after the death of a loved one. But I digress …
Starting from scratch to plan our trip was daunting but very exciting. Jill wanted to visit Florence and Venice, so we knew those had to be on the agenda. As independent travelers (we are not group-tour people), we wanted to plan our entire trip. Through many discussions, much research, and a bit of “what have we got to lose” attitude, we settled on the following itinerary:
It was bittersweet returning home again, but frankly, I had to do so, so I would stop spending money, eating, and drinking vino! Oh, the shopping, the food, and the wine! (Forgive me, I’m getting a little wistful.)
Although somewhat sad, our amazing journey came to an end, I was also excited to return home. I love the life my husband and I have built for ourselves. I’m also excited about My Pink Lawyer® and cool new happenings on the horizon. I love our clients. I love my family.
• Four days in Florence, renting an apartment close to the Duomo
• Seven-day cruise, round trip out of Venice in the Adriatic and Ionian Seas
Remember, we are here for your family at My Pink Lawyer® to help you plan well, which in turn, helps your loved ones to live well.
• Three days in Venice, renting an apartment on a canal (pretty much any place you stay in Venice will give you a view of a canal)
Until next time, ciao!
- Kristen Marks
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AUGUST QUIZ
MAKE THE GRADE!
Complete the quiz below and fax, mail, or email your answers back to our office by
August 20. Entries with the correct answers will be entered into a drawing for a bottle of Italian red wine! Delizioso! Answers can be found by watching our Women Empowered Minute videos at MyPinkLawyer.tv
Are your kids already sweating exams this semester? Fear not! Combine these tips with a regular studying routine, and they’ll be set for anything their teachers assign this year.
Chew On This Not all classrooms allow gum, but those that do offer
True/False Having a will guarantees you avoid probate.
areas of your brain responsible for attention and memory. Your student can even coordinate gum flavors with each of their classes. Do they have a biology test coming up? Encourage your student to chew peppermint gum while they study and while they take the test. Their brain will associate the minty flavor with those plant cell organelles they studied for an hour the night before. Proofread With Google Is your child trying to perfect an essay before a midnight deadline? Be sure they leave time to read their essay aloud! Tom Stafford, a psychologist who studies typos at the University of Sheffield, notes that when we reread our work, “we don’t catch every detail; we’re not like computers or NSA databases.” Your student doesn’t catch their typos because they don’t expect them! By reading their work aloud, your student can fix those typos as they come up. But why put in all the effort when they can let Google do it for them? They can simply copy and paste the essay into Google Translate and let it read the essay aloud. Hearing their work ring out in Google’s monotone speech will help them highlight and fix those mistakes. Get Off Facebook Is your child wasting all of their precious studying hours on social media? According to Common Sense Media’s 2015 national census survey, tweens and teens spend an average of six to nine hours on some form of media daily. Help your student learn to self-regulate with StayFocusd, a web extension available for free in the Chrome Web Store. By adding this extension to your web browser, you can limit the amount of time your child spends scrolling through Facebook and maximize the time they spend on Google Scholar and Quizlet.
True/False Retirement accounts always avoid probate.
True/False Have a living trust guarantees you avoid probate.
True/False A will requires a probate to pass along your assets.
True/False The chair that Kristen sits in during the videos is black.
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YOURS, MINE, AND OURS WISE WOMEN PLAN EVEN MORE CAREFULLY
Yours, mine, and ours — these are several pronouns, and they include multiple people. No matter what type of blended family situation you’re in, extra components indicate that some wise planning is needed.
First of all — and we can’t stress this enough — if you have children by another relationship, you need a prenuptial or postnuptial agreement in your new
marriage. Having one shows that you care enough about your children to ensure they are provided for if something happens to you. We get it. It’s an awkward conversation. But a couple who loves each other and their children will have the tough conversations. In those moments, it’s nice to have a competent and friendly estate lawyer to help facilitate the discussion. There are many additional ways to ensure your children are not cut out of an estate plan after you die. Some are simple, and some are complex (we deal with both). The important thing is that you discuss it with your estate planning lawyer, because bad things tend to happen when you don’t.
Consider this criminally common example. A married couple plans to leave everything to each other when they die. Then, upon both deaths, they want to leave everything to their respective children — his and hers — together. In a perfect world, that plan would hold up once one of them dies, but that isn’t always the case. Sometimes, upon one’s death, their spouse has a falling out with the stepchildren or gets remarried and changes the estate plan to omit the stepchildren altogether. They end up with nothing. Here’s the moral of the story: Wise women in blended families plan even more carefully than others. For more information on planning for your unique family situation, give us a call!
There are times when my greatest accomplishment is just keeping my mouth shut.
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Phone: 850.439.1191
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Inside This Issue
Buongiorno, Mio Amico! page 1
Make the Grade! August Quiz page 2
Wise Women Plan Carefully Free Workshops page 3
The Best Water Sport You Haven’t Tried Yet page 4
THE BEST WATER SPORT YOU HAVEN’T TRIED YET WHY YOU SHOULD GET INTO STAND-UP PADDLEBOARDING TODAY!
It’s the end of summer, and before fall and winter start to creep in, you can still take advantage of the warm weather and jump into the world’s fastest-growing water sport, stand-up paddleboarding (SUP). This sport is exactly what is sounds like. You stand on a paddleboard — like a surfboard but wider and more buoyant — and use a long paddle to glide across water. It sounds simple enough, but with a 200 percent boost in gear sales in the last year alone, SUP fans can tell you how much fun “simple” can be. Stand-up paddleboarding has ancient roots in African, Peruvian, and Hawaiian cultures. Thousands of years ago, each independently developed traditions of traveling across the water while using a paddle and a longboard. However, it was the Hawaiians who surfed the big waves with a paddleboard, and Maui surf legend Laird Hamilton was the first person to bring SUP to the continental United States.
Most stand-up paddleboarders aim to battle the waves to challenge their balance and core strength, but you don’t need to live by the ocean in order to enjoy paddleboarding. Wide lakes, lazy rivers, and even fierce rapids can all be perfect places to paddleboard. Basically, if you can bring a canoe, you can SUP there, too. Many outdoor gear providers across the world rent out SUP supplies now, so you can try it out with your friends before fully investing in the sport. Part of what makes SUP so fun is how the simple premise has been adopted into so many other activities. SUP enthusiasts created specially designed paddleboards for fishing, yoga, racing, and even touring the open ocean. So, what are you waiting for? Enjoy these last days of summer and have some fun out on the water!
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